(Dear Readers: This is from my Facebook posting. See appropriate links at the bottom of this web page.)
I’m near tears. A great leader of Black Brooklyn just died.
A former student of mine, from my LIU days in the '90s, just texted a link to a profile I did of Al Vann, for City Limits Magazine, back in 1997. It was titled “Al Vann and the Revolution, Unplugged.”
As I went from the middle of the article to the end, the meaning of Black Brooklyn welled up in me.
I could see, emerging, my book that Fordham University Press published in 2018 — “Boss of Black Brooklyn: The Life and Times of Bertram L. Baker.”
Baker (1898 to 1985) was Brooklyn’s very first Black elected official, having been elected to the state assembly in 1948. Vann (1935 to 2022) represented Bed-Stuy as an assemblyman after Baker's retirement, and then as City Councilman.
Separated by generation and political philosophy, Baker and Vann did not personally know each other.
There was, in fact, a coldness in Al Vann when he spoke to me over the years about my grandfather.
Even so, being a politician, Vann knew it was the right thing to do to get the New York City Council to co-name a Bed-Stuy street after Baker. He did that in 2011 when Jefferson Avenue (between Tompkins and Throop) was co-named Bertram L. Baker Way. (As I recall, Vann did not show up for the street co-naming ceremony, citing a scheduling conflict.)
Oh, there were tensions between me and Vann my elder. After that 1997 City Limits article, he stopped speaking to me for a time.
But he finally allowed me back into his Throop Avenue office and conceded that, while some things in the article could be viewed as reflecting negatively on him, my intentions were not ad hominem.
Further regarding that 1997 City Limits article, consider this: As I read it today I could see, in addition to the coming of "Boss of Black Brooklyn", the coming of my “King Al: How Sharpton Took the Throne.”
And it's that recent book (also published by Fordham University) that especially leaves me at peace with Al Vann.
Several months ago I called Vann and asked if I could visit him at home. I wanted to give him a signed copy of “King Al."
The octogenarian, former standout basketball player Vann seemed frail to me, as I sat on a couch in his stunningly maintained brownstone. But what the heck. Somehow I've always seen strength and survival in Al Vann.
To my delight, Vann several days later told me he loved the book and had absorbed it quickly and thoroughly.
Some of the gist is here: Rev. Al, in dubious days of late 1980s, did things regarding Vann that many considered offensive and unethical. For instance, like suggesting, undercover, to authorities that Vann had perhaps been guilty of “electoral” wrongdoings.
In a quick sketch of a politician's character, I point out in the book that Vann “had come up (politically) as a radical leader of the African American Teachers Association in the 1960s” and then “embarked on a career of progressive politics that finally resulted in his winning election to the Assembly.” He later went on become a City Councilman, retiring in 2013.
Responding to Sharpton’s allegation against Vann, I further wrote that “Vann came up during an era when other local Black politicians were being convicted of crimes related to their conduct in office." I mentioned how "Vann would often note with pride that he had never been convicted of, or even charged with, a crime—other than participating in street protests.”
Dear readers of this post: Please note that Sharpton -- while more recently identified with Harlem, with Albany, and with the halls of power in D.C. -- was born and raised in Brooklyn, and is thus part of Black Brooklyn’s history. (Note further that there’s a chapter in "King Al" titled “Rev. Al, Wayne Barrett, and Old Black Brooklyn.” The Rev.’s close ties to supreme Black Brooklyn history-maker Shirley Chisholm are referred to.)
Rest in peace, Al Vann.
https://www.amazon.com/Boss-Black-Brooklyn-Times-Bertram/dp/0823280993
https://www.amazon.com/King-Al-Sharpton-Took-Throne-ebook/dp/B08VCZFLY8
https://citylimits.org/1997/11/01/al-vann-and-the-revolution-unplugged/
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